Beer or wine? Why should you choose if you can love both of them? This could be what The Moorings had in mind when they started to work on their 5 track EP “Nicky’s Detox”.

Help yourself to a beer! A pint of stout? “A Lush on the Lash”, a stop and go number with a Canadian flavour and sing-along chorus.

One for the road? A jar of Kilkenny? “Shandon Bells”. Before listening to this song I thought that it could be a cover of Christy Moore’s song written by Jimmy McCarthy “The Mad Lady and Me”, and Frankie McLaughlin would be singing the Sinead O’Connor parts. But I was wrong, it’s an amazing folk punk original with great fiddling, banjo picking, gang vocals and a Sex Pistols sounding riff at the beginning.

A glass of Riesling? “Marie d’ la Madeleine”, another tale about a woman. An upbeat number sung in French and a “chanson” updated to the 21st century spirit.

Another one? Maybe a glass of Crémant d’Alsace? “Encore”, take your girl and dance to the accordion.

Are you feeling dizzy? Sit down and listen to “Nicky’s Detox”, a sort of a movie OST instrumental in the “The Third Man" vein.

“Nicky’s Detox” is packed in a gatefold sleeve. Line-up and credits are stated on the sleeve, but no lyrics have been included. Anyway, the lyrics to “A Lush on a Lash” can be found on the YouTube video.

The 4 guys and the girl from Sélestat have opened their musical universe to new sounds (and language). Not only have The Moorings delivered Celtic punk anthems, but also songs with a French twist sung in their mother tongue.

This is the second Weddings Parties Anything bootleg posted here. Another show from their early years was posted HERE.This Recording of Independent Origin is authorized by Mick Thomas, WPA front man and songwriter.

"On July 16th 2012, Mick Thomas granted permission to host Weddings Parties Anything recordings on the Live Music Archive:"

"This sounds more than fine to me. I am aware that people swap this stuff although I have to admit I'd never heard of this particular archive. But I reckon the majority of people that buy this stuff tend to buy everything I release anyway and the live stuff that I put out is generally a little cleaned up so the archive is catering to those who have developed a taste for the raw sound that some people still struggle with. So, go for it I reckon. If you wanted to keep me informed about stuff going up there then even better.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Homeland "The Show" Wasted Heart Records
Release date: August 1st, 2014
Running time: 51:44, 13 tracksHey guys, don’t be afraid! You’re at the right place, I have not moved from Celtic music reviews to TV series reviews. So if you have thought that I was going to write about Carrie Mathison adventures in the Greater Middle East, you’re wrong. The Homeland from this write-up is not the Claire Danes TV series, but a kick-ass Celtic rock band from Central Ohio.

“The Show” is a well-balanced album and the band sounds really tight. Most of the tracks on the album are original songs. The guys cover Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town” (adding a fiddle tune played with an American twist), “Leaving of Liverpool” (awesome bagpipes and fiddle on the traditional tune that has been added) and the sadly defunct piper Gordon Duncan’s “Pressed for Time” (which gets a fiddle treatment à la Shooglenifty “The Pipes Tunes”)

“Modern Man” is the right opener and Tyler plays mandolin instead of fiddle. I can hear some Oysterband echoes on this Celtic rock at its best number. “The Show” is a great song featuring “The Cooleys” reel. “Nothing Simple” has a “Camptown Races” vibe and a U2 flavour. It’s followed by “Mud”, a rocking number. The next song is “The Climb”, a track featuring bagpipes whose beginning makes me think of The Clash “Guns of Brixton". Nice La-La-la chorus.

Track no. 6, “The Cloud”, is an excellent number with some hard rock and funky arrangements. Great fiddle and guitar work on this song. “The Roof” is another amazing song. A quieter beginning and then the full band burst at 1:20 shifting to a U2 infused number. “Ghost Ship” is a brilliant song featuring pipes and mandolin. “Pipe Song” is a top-notch tune on which only guitars and percussion can be heard. And, finally, “Closing Song” is a quieter number that sounds like Oysterband singing acapella “Old Mountain Thyme”.

The album is packed in a 4 panel digipack. No lyrics to the songs have been added, but a band pic, thank you’s and credits are included. I feel that there was a mess when the credits were sent to be printed. It’s stated that all songs are written and arranged by Homeland except “Pressed for Time” written by Gordon Duncan. However, “Dirty Old Town” was written by Ewan MacColl and “Leaving of Liverpool” is trad. As the guys stated every single tune featured in their songs on their previous album, but they are not written now, I guess that they did it again, but a computer goblin removed some lines.

Celtic punk and Celtic rock are not closed worlds. There is a door between them and I recommend to Celtic punk fans to open it and go into the Celtic rock universe. Homeland are excellent musicians who write their own songs, but also know and respect the traditional tunes and ballads. They play their songs with gusto and their skill to fit traditional tunes and songs is really remarkable. Get a copy of Homeland “The Show” and listen carefully to the songs. You won’t find big stadium bullshit, but honest songs with a heart.

A new sampler featuring Pirate, Folk punk, Folk rock and Celtic punk bands from Australia, Japan and Indonesia. All the songs are legally available for free on the Internet. At the bottom you'll find the links to every song

Muirsheen Durkin and Friends - Drink with The IrishRelease date: November 29, 2014Running time: 18:41, 5 tracksAfter a debut album full of covers, Muirsheen Durkin and Friends are back with a highly recommendable EP. “Drink with the Irish”. The “Big Band” from Arnsberg is moving forward and 3 out of 5 tracks are self-penned songs.The first number is titled “Drink with the Irish”. Accordion, electric guitar and tin whistle can be heard on this song that merges influences by the early The Porters and Lady Godiva(Remember that singer and tin whistler Mac Rünker was a member of that seminal Celtic punk band).The German Celtic punk school flavour can be felt on track number 3 too. “The Pogues and Whiskey” is an amazing tribute to the band we all love, The Pogues.Muirsheen Durkin and Friends deliver a new sound on track number two thanks to the addition of a bagpiper (who also plays on the last two tracks). “Tavern Song” gets a Celtic rock treatment with some German rock influences. Even if the running time is almost 5 minutes, one feels that it’s an upbeat short song.To finish up, Muirsheen Durkin and Friends cover a couple of standards. The performances and arrangements are good, but, IMHO, there are already a lot of renditions of “Loch Lomond” and “Danny Boy”. On their previous album, Muirsheen Durkin and Friends included some covers that were not overexposed. If they had followed that approach, the balance original songs/covers would have been better on “Drink With The Irish”Apart from that detail, “Drink with the Irish” is an excellent EP. I’m looking forward to listening to their next album featuring more original songs.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Punk Whiskey hail from Budapest (Hungary) and released a 7 track EP some months ago, "Delirius"

"The band was formed in September 2011, as a classical Celtic-punk, Irish-punk band. Our only purpose was to make our audience dance as much as we just can, wherever we go, and play - And of course to having great parties on the stage :) As the time was spending, we started to look after other musical styles. At first we started to rearrange well-known hits to the "punkwhiskey-style" (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Green Day etc.), then we turned our ship to the direction of Polish polka-punk, but from here there was no way to stop: from an Irish-punk band we became a folk punk, or world punk band, including everything in our music, what we can call "party" in the world. :)

In our repertoire you can find Irish, Balcanic, Roman, Polish, gypsy, South American, country and other kinds of folk music - of course mixed with a lots of our punk.

Malasañers was a side project of Carlos Del Pino and Elena Burdiel, whose main band was the punk-rock outfit Dusty Trip. The band’s name is clearly a tribute to The Dubliners. The band hailed from Malasañers, a well-known district in Madrid, and they used to play Irish standards. Some of them were gathered in their first recording, a collection of pub favourites.

Support slots with the likes of The Mahones and The Real McKenzies helped the band to gain a reputation. They also played the St.Patrick’s Day Festival in Madrid. As musicians, they felt that the Spanish circuit was too small and therefore they decided to move to Bamberg, Germany.

“Spanish Eyes” has been recorded in a couple of studios in Madrid (Karma) and Germany (Nobody Knows) mainly by Spanish musicians with a little help from Nobody Knows frontman Max Heckel on fiddle. There is a big jump between their previous work and “Spanish Eyes”, since ALL of the songs on this debut album are self-penned songs. Some lyrics have been written by members of the Irish community in Madrid. Musically, the album follows the balladeers approach (The Dubliners,Wolfe Tones, Dublin Citry Ramblers …), but adapted to the 21st century.

The album begins with “Spanish Eyes”, a great number about the Spanish Civil War and the International Brigades. It’s a banjo and mandolin led song with an epic chorus. It’s followed by another song about the Spanish War of Independence, "King's Shilling", and “Still Alive”. IMHO, fiddle and tin whistle are a little bit hidden in the mix in these numbers, something that is fixed on the next tracks.

“Drunk and Single in Madrid” is the catchiest song on “Spanish Eyes”: the story of an Irishman in Madrid played with a punkabilly approach. The next song, “Listen”, has a slight The Men They Couldn’t Hang twist because of the fiddle arrangements. Track no. 6, “Rights”, is another amazing song that will please Celtic punk fans, a song complaining about the politicians who sold our rights down the river.

“The Price of a Memory” features harmonica and is followed by “Tell Why”, an interesting number on which Max’s fiddle shines. “Lucky Duckies” reminds of Mike Ness and “Siege of Drogheda” is a ballad featuring accordion.

Finally, the lively “Walking Towards the End” open the path to a couple of standouts: “Too Many Fools”, a catchy song with a Johnny Cash twist, and “Stoneheart”, another Celtic punk number.

“Spanish Eyes” has been produced by Carlos and Elena and mastered by pop-punk legend Mass Giorgini, Squirtgun member and producer/engineer of bands such as Screeching Weasel, The Queers, Huntingtons, etc. The album package is a jewel case with an eight page booklet including lyrics, credits, line-up and guests.

If you enjoy The Stompers (Barcelona) and Bizardunak (Basque Country) early albums, then grab a copy of Malasañers “Spanish Eyes”.

After a while listening to a lot of CDs in order to get the “Best of” lists, it’s high time I caught up with some reviews. The last albums to be reviewed in 2014 are not rowdy Celtic punk CDs, but all of them have a lot of interesting songs.

Jay Stevens a.k.a. Jay Wars was the front man of the sadly defunct band Between the Wars. As a songwriter, music is flowing in Jay’s veins and therefore he needs to show it to his fans and friends. He could have started a new band, but he decided to follow a different approach. Armed with a bunch of self-penned songs and one cover, he called a couple of his old band mates (fiddler Haley Anderson and drummer Dan Scalpelli), Toffer Rush (bass) and Joel Stibbard (mandolin on “The Cruel Sea”) to record “Carry Me Home”. The result is a cross of Christy Moore storytelling and Billy Bragg workers’ topics improved with an Aussie twist.

“Carry Me Home” don’t have “intro” and “outro”, but a “Prologue” and an “Epilogue”. “Prologue” is an instrumental number featuring Jay on keyboards and Hayley on fiddle. It’s followed by “Pints of Guinness Made Me Weak”, a song featurings bits of the lyrics for “Black is the Colour”, a song from Christy Moore’s repertoire learnt from Scottish artist Hamish Inlach in the late 60’s. Hayley backs Jay perfectly on this acoustic number.

Fans loving Between the Wars will notice a similar approach on the next track, “Give Me A Drink”, one of the standouts songs of the album. Jay, Hayley and Dan are really tight on this kick-ass song. Watch a live footage from the album launch HERE.

“Souvenirs” is another lively song on which Joe Guiton guest on backing vocals. That’s what Joe Guiton told about it on his facebook page : “The story goes like this: It’s a sunny Sunday about two months and I am nursing an INCREDIBLE hangover from some Suicide Tuesdays gig the night before. My phone rings and I answer it quickly because the noise is making my brain jump out of my skull. I say hello and Toff is on the other line. "have you got a spare E String?" he asks loudly. Im all "Dont yell motherfucker!" Hes all "ha!" anyways, for some reason I check my pockets, you know... Where everyone keeps spare strings.. To my shock I find a packet of guitar strings. What the fuck? i think to myself. Turns out Yatesy had given them to me the night before... So i tell Toff that i do in fact have spare strings and to come get them. About 3 minutes later Jay Wars and Toff turn up. Toff is recording Jays Record. I’m like "cool". They ask if I want to come around and hang out. All I really wanted to do was eat slices of some kind of deli meat and watch Gilmore Girls... But I was ashamed of that so I say yes to hanging out. We go get beer, like we needed it... But you know.. Monkey see monkey do. I drink 5 beers and watch Jay record. Jay asks if I want to do some backing vocals. My voice is thrashed, I’m drunk AGAIN, so I go "FUCK YEAH" Everything gets a bit hazy after that... But two months later Jay emails me to say that he liked it so much that he’s keeping the backing vocals and he’s putting a "Featuring Joe Guiton" on the record! STOKED! Anyways wanted to say that it is awesome to be a part of this wonderful singer songwriters solo record. He’s a top bloke and I hope that my slightly out of time backing vocals don’t ruin a wonderful folk record. If you've read all of this... Go pre order this motherfucker now!!!”

The next number is another highlight, the catchy “The Irish Boys of Old”. If you’re still missing Between the Wars, then listen to this song three times in a row. Different approach, but same spirit. Don’t forget, Jay is alive and kicking!!!

The level of the compositions is top-notch and the shanty “The Cruel Sea” gets a punk treatment. Go to Jay WarsFacebook page scroll down to December 6th and watch the video shot at a gig at the Brunny. Maybe the sound is not excellent, but you’ll see how Jay, Hayley and Dan give it all their got.

Another fave is “If You’re Not, Don’t”: hypnotic violin and amazing rythm section. After that great song, Jay moves to the Bard of Barking territory on “Oh Penny”, a more intimate number.

“The Number of The Worker” is together with ”The Irish Boys of Old” and “If You’re Not, Don’t” a song that gets the almost “full band” treatment. Enjoy Dan’s work on drums.

Jay covers NOFX “Linoleum”. If “Oh Penny” had a “Talking with the Taxman about Poetry” approach, “Linoleum” would have a “Life’s a Riot” twist.

“A Derry Girl and a Whiskey Chaser” is a stripped down song featuring Jay on guitar and Hayley on violin. The next song, “I Won’t Die Digging” begins with some waves and birds sounds. No instrument are played, Jay sings and backing vocals can be heard on the chorus. “Sleepy” is a number featuring Teer, Jay’s girlfriend. As he says on the liner notes “Thanks go to Teer without whom this record never would’ve been made – I love you and you brighten my day (and nights)”

The album finishes up with “Epilogue”. No Drums on this song featuring Melbourne Celtic folk band Saoirse.

After Roaring Jack broke-up, Alaistair Hullett recorded and toured with British fiddler Dave Swarbrick. Jay Wars has found the best backing band for his music too, The Howard Youth (Hayley and Dan). Celtic punks, please give a listen to this album. And take into account that all proceeds from this records are distributed to various charities chosen by Jay Wars, including, but not limited, to charities for the wellbeing and support of asylum seekers and refugees, LGBTQI youths and those who suffer from depression, bipolar and related disorders.

And don’t forget to read the album review that our London Celtic Punk friends published some weeks ago:

"After 7 years, Folkamiseria announce their first official video clip "Pirati del Po", the first single from their new album "Musici Mosaici" , a fresh and new remix from Gianluca Amendolara . Full slang ( piemontese ) and amazing pirates atmosphere , the song tells about this pirate's crew and their hunt for a hidden treasure. Curious how it ends ? Come to see the clip !!!"

This is The Bawdy Boys special present for you on Christmas, "Christmas in the Trenches".

"This Christmas, we took part in a rare opportunity and recreated something special that represents what Humanity really is all about.

In 1914, in a far away place, people were at war. Many countries fighting each other over disputes, claims and accusations. Bloodshed was plenty and families were left torn apart. The world, however, seemed to stop but for a few brief hours on that Christmas. Men from warring countries came together to share in the spirit of that holiday. This unofficial cease-fire changed so much of how war is conducted today but it also stands as a monument to the heart of Humanity. So as we find ourselves tried, tested and weary, remember that we are all apart of the same patch of dirt. It's where we come from, it's who we are.

Several years later, before a show, a singer/songwriter named John McCutcheon was told the story of the cease-fire by a janitor of the venue John was performing. Some time after, he wrote this song.

We are proud to share our recreation of that song.

To all of the veterans, soldiers and widows. To every one of you. Merry Christmas.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

"Tracks 1
and 2 recorded in the midst of a work-related party-hangover. Track 3
taken from the ever increasing pile of demos for my new album which
should be coming out in 2015, although, it sounds nothing like the
finished recorded version!
All tracks recorded, mixed and mastered by me on a BR800 digital 8
track, with me playing every instrument to varying degrees of success.
Track choices:
Stop the Calvary - an anti-war song that only features a passing
reference to christmas, but this was enough for the record company to
take it, lavish it with tubular bells and whistles and turn it in to a
Christmas classic. For better or for worse.
Algeria - my favourite JJ72 song, simplicity runs high in this song with the anger of the repetition of seasons and mistakes.
Bleecker St - A love song I've written for my second favourite city: New York."

Rum Currency's album "The Bolters" has been postponed, but the work in progress can be downloaded for free. As usual you can click on donate.

"At this stage it doesn’t look like this project will be finished any time soon due to lack of time, interest and money. No progress has been made for a number of months, so I have had to shelve it to work on other projects and get back to life. Maybe I’ll get back to it next year (or later), but here’s the partially completed recordings pending any musical additions from others at some point down the road.

17 albums from Europe: 4 from Italy, 2 from Ireland, 2 from Germany, 2 bands based in Spain (Basque Country and Catalonia), 1 from Austria, 1 from Belgium, 1 from Denmark, 1 from France, 1 from Hungary, 1 from Sweden, 1 from the UK and 1 from Ukraine

11 albums from North America: 8 from the USA and 3 from Canada

1 album from South America: Brazil

1 album from Africa: South Africa

2 albums from Australasia: Australia

2 albums from Asia: 1 from Indonesia and 1 from JapanRemarks

1) As usual, this post is titled as “the best of”. However, this is not a competition, but a sort of a game. Remember that I give neither points, nor stars to the albums that are reviewed. I’d say that, IMHO, this is the list of the most enjoyable albums of 2014. It's a party!

2) This list is subjective, but not unfair: it covers the albums that I have enjoyed. Other lists are being posted on other sites and they'll be different. And I feel that diversity is good.

3) Important: Please remember that it’s a list of albums, not a list of bands.

4) I've tried to be coherent. Everybody should know that I prefer original material to over-exposed standards.

5) Please remember that I'm only a fan. Maybe some albums are technically or musically better than others. I have taken into account catchy songs, fresh approaches, originality and maybe I've given priority to raucous sounds rather than to polished sounds

6) Yes, this is a Celtic Punk e-zine. Then priority has been given to Celtic punk bands, but you'll also find quite a few Celtic rock and folk punk bands.7) Only the albums that have been received for review/airplay purposes and/or that have been shared for free by the bands have been rated. Other recordings were released in 2014, but unfortunately no copy was submitted. Anyway, I feel that this is not biaising the list.8) This Best of 2014 covers the albums that have been released from December 2013 to November 2014.

9) Neither Live albums, nor only covers albums have been taken into account. The same applies to compilations.

10) To be at the bottom of the list doesn't involve that an album
is rather poor. The difference between the 5th place and the 20th place
would be a tiny nuance.The same applies to the places going from 21st to 35th.

Remember, no compilation albums are elegible for the list. But this album is really amazing:

VA "Wind from the Foreign Land - An Indonesian Celtic Punk Compilation" WLRV RecordsReviewThanks to all the bands for sending their stuff to be reviewed. Special thanks to Drink Hunters for stating my name on the "Thanks" section of their album!